Beech and oak are both hard, heavy hardwoods with similar strength, and in Europe they are the two staple furniture and flooring timbers. In North America oak is far more common, and American beech is mostly seen in flooring, chairs, handles and woodenware. This page compares American beech with red and white oak using the Wood Handbook tables.
Beech vs Oak: the numbers
| Property | American beech | Northern red oak | White oak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Janka side hardness, 12% MC | 1,300 lbf | 1,290 lbf | 1,360 lbf |
| Density at 12% MC | 44.7 lb/ft³ | 44.1 lb/ft³ | 47.5 lb/ft³ |
| Weight per board foot | 3.73 lb | 3.67 lb | 3.96 lb |
| Bending strength (MOR), 12% MC | 14,900 psi | 14,300 psi | 15,200 psi |
| Stiffness (MOE), 12% MC | 1.72 million psi | 1.82 million psi | 1.78 million psi |
| Crushing strength parallel to grain | 7,300 psi | 6,760 psi | 7,440 psi |
| Shrinkage green to ovendry, tangential | 11.9% | 8.6% | 10.5% |
| Shrinkage, radial | 5.5% | 4.0% | 5.6% |
| Shrinkage, volumetric | 17.2% | 13.7% | 16.3% |
| Tangential / radial ratio (cupping tendency) | 2.16 | 2.15 | 1.88 |
| Width change per 1% MC, flatsawn (Table 13-5) | 0.431% | 0.369% | 0.365% |
| Heartwood decay resistance (Table 14-1) | slightly or nonresistant | slightly or nonresistant | resistant |
What the numbers mean
- Hardness: American beech is 1% harder than Northern red oak (1,300 against 1,290 lbf), so it resists dents from furniture feet, dropped tools and wear correspondingly better.
- Weight: American beech is 1% heavier. A 1 x 6 board 8 feet long (4 board feet nominal) weighs about 14.9 lb in american beech and 14.7 lb in northern red oak at 12% moisture content.
- Strength and stiffness: American beech is 4% stronger in bending, but Northern red oak is 6% stiffer, and stiffness is what decides how much a shelf of the same size sags under the same load.
- Movement: a flatsawn board 10 in wide that goes from 6% to 12% moisture content (a dry winter to a humid summer indoors) swells about 0.259 in (1/4 in) in american beech and 0.221 in (7/32 in) in northern red oak, from Handbook Eq. 13-2 and the Table 13-5 coefficients. Allow for this in table tops, panels and floors.
- Decay resistance of the heartwood: American beech: slightly or nonresistant; Northern red oak: slightly or nonresistant; White oak: resistant. Sapwood of every species has low decay resistance.
- The percentages above compare the first two columns; the table also lists White oak for comparison.
Appearance, working and what to watch for
They look very different. Oak is ring porous, with large open pores that give strong grain and need filling for a glass-smooth finish, and big rays that show as flake figure on quartersawn faces. Beech has a close, uniform texture with small pores, little figure and small dark ray flecks, so it takes paint well and gives a plain, smooth surface. Beech is pale to reddish brown; red oak is pinkish tan and white oak olive tan.
The Handbook calls beech heavy, hard, strong, high in shock resistance and highly suitable for steam bending, which is why it is so common in bentwood chairs. Its weakness is movement: beech shrinks substantially and needs careful drying, and its high tangential to radial ratio means flatsawn boards cup more than oak. White oak heartwood resists decay; beech and red oak do not, although beech is rather easy to treat with preservatives.
Flooring notes
Both woods make hard-wearing floors. Because beech moves more with humidity, beech floors do best in homes with steady indoor humidity, and narrower boards or engineered beech help. Red and white oak are the most common North American flooring woods; white oak is preferred where floors may get wet, as in kitchens, because its pores are plugged with tyloses. Whichever you choose, let the flooring acclimatise in the room and leave the expansion gaps the manufacturer specifies.
Which to choose: verdict by use
| Use | Better choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bentwood and steam-bent chairs | Beech | Highly suitable for steam bending. |
| Painted furniture and toys | Beech | Close grain gives a smooth painted surface. |
| Quartersawn figure, Arts and Crafts furniture | White oak | Large rays give ray flake. |
| Outdoor and wet uses | White oak | The only one of the three with decay-resistant heartwood. |
| Wide solid table tops | Oak | Moves less across the width than beech. |
| Firewood | Either | Similar density, so similar heat per cord when both are well seasoned. |
Frequently asked questions
Is beech harder than oak?
About the same. American beech has 1,300 lbf of Janka hardness, between northern red oak (1,290 lbf) and white oak (1,360 lbf), in the Wood Handbook.
Is beech or oak better firewood?
Both are good. Heat per cord rises with density, and the two are close: 44.7 lb/ft³ for beech against 44.1 lb/ft³ and 47.5 lb/ft³ for the oaks at 12% moisture content. Season either for at least a year.
Does beech move more than oak?
Yes. Its tangential shrinkage is 11.9% against 8.6% for red oak and 10.5% for white oak, green to ovendry, and flatsawn beech cups more.
Sources and method
All property values are read from our parsed copy of the USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material (FPL-GTR-190, 2010), a US Government publication in the public domain, the same data as the wood species database. The percentages and the board examples above are our arithmetic on those values. The values describe small, clear, straight-grained specimens: real boards with knots or sloping grain differ, and structural lumber is sized from graded design values in your local building code, not from this table.
- USDA Forest Products Laboratory. Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material. General Technical Report FPL-GTR-190, 2010. Chapter 2 (species descriptions), Chapter 4 (Tables 4-3, 4-4 shrinkage; Eq. 4-7, 4-9, 4-12 density), Chapter 5 (Tables 5-3b, 5-5b strength and hardness), Chapter 13 (Table 13-5 dimensional change coefficients), Chapter 14 (Table 14-1 decay resistance)
- USDA Forest Products Laboratory. Wood Handbook, 2021 edition (FPL-GTR-282)
Last reviewed: 24 October 2026. How we build and check our data: methodology and corrections. Spotted an error? Please let us know.